[Fic] And the vacuum in space will draw me to you
Title: And the vacuum in space will draw me to you
Author: analine
Pairing: TutixNagayan
Warnings: None. Worksafe.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3,100
Summary: Unexpected new beginnings after senshuuraku.
Notes: I'm not really sure where this came from, but somehow, I ended up writing a Burimyu senshuuraku get-together fic. It was kind of a random idea that I just went with, and this is how it ended up, so... I hope you like it? ^_~ (And despite the title, this has nothing to do with space. Or vacuums. :P It's from Next to You by Bell X1, which I just happened to be listening to a lot as I was finishing this. @_@;)
Anyway. Comments/thoughts are always greatly appreciated. <3
“Why are you here, again?”
Tuti squints as bright, artificial light floods the dim room, but he mostly ignores Takashi’s question for the moment in favor of keeping his balance as he tries not to trip over Takashi, or his own feet in the other man’s small genkan.
Takashi toes off his shoes quickly, stumbling a little as he steps up into the room, most likely trying to give Tuti some space to do the same. It’s probably always awkward with two people here, Tuti’s thinking as he struggles to find a spare surface to hold onto as he unlaces his trainers, and Takashi’s hip connects with his leg as the other man drops his bag in the corner next to his shoes.
Takashi takes a few steps into the small apartment, wriggling out of his coat, and unwraps the scarf from around his neck deliberately, tilting his head back and forth to stretch the muscles as he goes.
Tuti’s sure that Takashi’s question is (mostly) rhetorical, but somehow he feels compelled to answer anyway-he supposes it’s sort of become the running joke of the evening, after all.
**
The first time Takashi had asked, they were tucked away in the evening’s first stop-off, an izakaya not too far from the theater. Tuti had been using Takashi’s shoulder for a pillow for a good twenty minutes or so, and at the time it had seemed like a really good idea, in much the same way that having Takashi refill his glass with sake more times than he’d bothered to count had.
Tuti’s answer that first time had been simple--why not?--to which Takashi had rolled his eyes, but hadn’t moved his ass over an inch (he could have, if he’d been so inclined; it wasn’t that crowded). If anything, he seemed to have shifted a bit in favor of more contact, warm skin soaking through layers of cotton and denim against Tuti’s thigh and calf and ankle in the darkness.
The next time they’d been at the second bar (or maybe it had been the third--it was hard to tell the difference after a while).
Takashi was mingling, standing between Eiki and Tatsuya, watching Asuka and Miki goof off back at the corner table, interjecting encouraging comments here and there with a huge smile on his face, the kind that made his eyes crinkle up at the edges.
Tuti had just kind of sauntered over Ichimaru-style, creeping first into Tatsuya’s peripheral vision and then Takashi’s, who’d given him an elbow in the shoulder for his trouble. The brief moment of eye contact they’d shared stood out in Tuti’s memory of the entire evening though, for some reason, maybe because it had just been so long since he’d seen Takashi like this, and he’d sort of forgotten the way the other man’s eyes took on a certain quality, giddy with exhaustion and overstimulation and a glass or two or three of whatever had been put in front of him that he’d been too polite to refuse.
Takashi had asked him the same thing then, though this time it might have been more along the lines of what the hell are you doing here (delivered with a good natured smirk, of course). Tuti isn’t really sure how he’d answered, just that he had, and that Takashi had made space for him wordlessly, had sought out his eyes next when he turned around to laugh about something the girls had just said, and that after that, he hadn’t left Takashi’s side for the rest of the evening.
**
Takashi had asked him the same thing again, hours later, as morning light had started to reluctantly peek through the night sky, a kind of sober calm falling over everyone as they said their goodbyes and caught the first trains back home.
Pressed next to him on the train, Takashi had leaned over so that his head was practically in Tuti’s lap when he posed the question again, blinking up at him, looking silly but a little serious at the same time.
“You don’t usually take this line,” Takashi said, settling back into his seat and closing his eyes before Tuti had a chance to come up with an answer. Takashi ran a hand over his head, and opened his eyes again slowly. In this light, Tuti could see that they were a little puffy, a little red around the edges. “Right?”
Tuti shrugged. “Figured I’d walk you home. Nothing better to do, you know?”
Takashi blinked, then smiled like he knew something Tuti didn’t. “Are you trying to tell me something, Tsuchiya?” A pause. “I don’t look that bad off, do I?”
Tuti just laughed and shook his head, but Takashi kept asking him the same question from before, his teasing relentless as usual, on the entire walk from the station to his apartment.
Tuti had laughed right along with him, and had given him a series of perfectly acceptable answers--because I can’t trust you to get home otherwise; because you know how much I love this part of town; because I know you still have that bottle of wine I bought you for your birthday three years ago sitting around somewhere-- butting in and interrupting Takashi as he asked again and again, but the butterflies in his stomach had started somewhere on the train, and weren’t showing signs of going away any time soon.
**
In fact, this uncomfortable trembling feeling in his stomach has gotten a little manic now, a little crazy--it has been ever since the door closed behind him in Takashi’s apartment.
There’s just so much of Takashi here, it’s a little overwhelming. When Tuti’s here--and he has been before, just not in a while--he’s reminded of just how much of Takashi there is that he doesn’t see in the dressing room, or on stage, or on short walks to the station together, or during hurried meals in between breaks in their rehearsal schedule. Here, Takashi has everything that matters to him plastered to the walls and stacked up around him, spilling out onto every spare surface, and it makes Tuti’s chest tighten a little, just thinking about Takashi sleeping here, getting dressed here, making his way out to the theater in the morning from this place.
Takashi is eyeing him curiously from across the room though, and Tuti realizes he still hasn’t taken more than two steps in from the genkan.
“You can actually come in, you know,” Takashi teases, eyes shining, his face bright now, despite the late (early?) hour, and the fact that so much was supposed to be ending right now, tonight, today. They were supposed to be sad, right? He didn’t even know when he’d see Takashi again after this.
“And what, now all the sudden you don’t have an answer?” Takashi teases again. “How boring~”
“No, I do, I do,” Tuti hedges.
“Just not ready to share?” Takashi tilts his head curiously at him as hops up onto his bed, and slouches back against the wall.
He grabs a pillow and tosses it to Tuti, gesturing for him to sit down.
“Yeah, maybe that’s it.”
Takashi just blinks, stares past him for a moment, blinks again.
They share a few stories from the uchiage--things that happened over at the girl’s table before Tuti came over at that second (third?) bar, a few interesting tidbits of information that Tuti had gleaned from Shougo-san about what married life was really like, and then they compare notes a bit on who had seemed the worst for wear come morning (Tatsuya--not surprising; Naoya-a little more so).
Eventually the conversation dies down though, and Takashi starts to look a little worse for wear himself, rubbing at his eyes and yawning.
Tuti shifts a little in his seat on the floor across from Takashi’s bed, readjusting the pillow behind his back.
“You going to sleep?” Tuti asks after a few minutes of watching Takashi poke at his phone, his eyes seeming to blink slower and slower at the screen with each passing second.
Takashi shrugs. “Later.” He pokes at his phone for another second, and then sets it down, fixing Tuti with a serious look.
“So,” Takashi says, his eyes dark and a little dangerous, “you ready to tell me yet?”
“What?”
“Or maybe,” Takashi says quietly, “Maybe that’s not how it’s going to go…”
He half-whispers, half-mumbles this last part to himself, as he gets up from the bed and squats down next to Tuti, so close that Tuti can feel the other man’s body heat, can see the traces of eyeliner hiding in the crease of his left eyelid.
Takashi stares at him for a long moment--Tuti is frozen, mind wiped blank from the close proximity of Takashi’s face, from the fact that he can hear Takashi swallow in the space between them, can see the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple plain as day, inches away from his own skin.
Then Takashi closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, all pretenses falling away. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just…”
And then Takashi is leaning forward and pressing his lips to Tuti’s, fingers closing over Tuti’s shoulders and gripping tightly as he tilts his head to get a better angle, noses bumping against each other in the process. Tuti can feel a little stubble on Takashi’s upper lip as they shift, can feel the breath from Takashi’s nose against his cheek, and his hair brushing against his ear. Tuti kisses him back, of course, or he thinks he does, but when he feels Takashi gently part his lips with his tongue he thinks his brain must be seriously short-circuiting, because all of this feels completely familiar in a way, but completely like nothing he’s ever experienced at the same time.
He’s trying to concentrate on Takashi, on what Takashi tastes like, on the pace of his lips and his tongue, so that he can match it, but it’s all a bit surreal, like it’s happening in another dimension, maybe, where time and space just don’t exist like he’s used to, and before he has the nerve to try to deepen the kiss at all, Takashi is pulling away, letting go of his shoulders and almost falling away from him, as he shifts his legs and his body, and moves so that he’s facing Tuti, his back against his bed.
Tuti watches Takashi’s chest rise and fall as he takes a few deep breaths. He’s just staring at Tuti though, blinking every few seconds, and his face is blank except for his eyes--wide and dark and confused, questioning.
“I don’t know why I did that,” he says eventually, but then he shakes his head. “No, that’s wrong. I do. I wanted to. For a long time.”
“Me too,” Tuti says quickly, but he wonders if he’s said it quickly enough, because Takashi just laughs.
“I’m not just saying that. I mean it,” Tuti says, but he suddenly realizes he’s exhausted, he has no idea how to do this, and clearly Takashi isn’t much better off, because he’s just sitting there looking honestly…amused, like he wants to laugh again, but is holding it in.
Tuti’s pretty sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to go with them, finally, after so long.
Then Takashi closes his eyes, drawing his knees to his chest, and sighs. A few awkward beats of silence pass between them.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Takashi says abruptly after another minute of silence, and a second later, he’s on his feet, moving away.
A second after that, he’s in the shower.
The sounds of the water against the shower door drown out Tuti’s thoughts because he lets them, because he’s just too tired to think anymore. He hadn’t realized it before right now, but Tuti thinks maybe with this, he’s completely reached his limit. If he wasn’t so damn tired, he’d probably be out the door, running way from this before he can even figure out what just happened, but he can’t move. He can’t do anything.
It feels like no more than a minute or two, but before he knows it, Takashi is squatting next to him again and shaking his shoulder. He’s smiling now, looking calm. Content, even. He’s changed into a t-shirt and soft grey pajama pants. His hair is wet. If it were long, like it used to be, it’d be dripping onto Tuti’s lap.
“It’s probably bad for you to sleep there, don’t you think?”
That’s all he says, but it’s enough of an invitation for Tuti and something like relief washes over him, as he gets up to follow Takashi into bed. He’s sure there should be something more than just warm…bed…Takashi… going through his head right now, but there really isn’t. Something about this turn of events seems particularly commonplace, normal, though it’s anything but that, of course.
“Wait,” Takashi says and sits up, just as Tuti is about to pull the covers over himself.
“Turn off the light? Second switch over there on the left.”
Tuti nods, gets out of bed, glances over at Takashi to make sure he’s got the right one, and then flips it.
There’s an afterimage though that won’t go away, even when the lights are out and his features have faded into the dimness around them. Tuti thinks of it hours later, lying there staring up into the morning light with Takashi snoring quietly next to him. Takashi’s face, scrubbed clean and bare, no more traces of stage makeup allowed, and his hair, half-slicked back and wet, the shorter dry pieces up on the top sticking up every which way. Takashi, looking at him with no pretense whatever, asking him to turn out the light in his bedroom as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And that, Tuti decides, is a little amazing.
Takashi’s bed is small, so he can feel all the curves and angles of Takashi’s frame next to him immediately after he climbs back in. Takashi smells clean--like soap, and shampoo, and mint. He’s so close, as close as he’s ever, ever been, but Tuti isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do now, what he wants to do.
“I’m really happy,” Takashi says quietly after a moment. The sound of his voice is close too--it settles somewhere deep in Tuti’s chest. “I didn’t think I would be, after all this. The show, I mean.”
Tuti is silent.
“I wish I could figure out why you came here though. You didn’t have to.”
“I did,” Tuti argues. “I definitely did.”
“And why’s that?”
“For this.”
Takashi laughs. “What? One lame little kiss and me running off to the shower and then falling asleep on you?”
“Come on, it wasn’t so bad.”
“Tuti--”
“I’m sure we’ll manage better next time, but… For a first kiss, it wasn’t bad.”
It’s not that dark anymore, morning sun has been making its way in through the cracks in the blinds for a while now, so Tuti sneaks a look at Takashi. His eyes are closed, and he's smiling. Grinning, really--the smile takes up his whole face.
“Yeah, I thought it was pretty good too,” Takashi says finally with a laugh.
He shifts a little so that his forehead is pressed against Tuti’s shoulder, and then moves closer, pressing the full length of his body against Tuti’s side from his shoulders to his toes.
After a few seconds though, he shifts suddenly, sits up on one elbow. “You,” he pokes Tuti in the shoulder. “You should take off your pants.”
Tuti lets out a loud laugh, and Takashi swats at him with his free hand.
“It’s weird to have you wearing that to bed, that’s all. You smell like smoke.”
“Right.”
“Come on, I’ll lend you something.”
Five minutes later, and Tuti has changed into a pair of pants that are way too short on him, but are definitely more comfortable than his jeans, he’ll give Takashi that, and a t-shirt that feels clean and smells a little like Takashi’s shampoo.
“That’s much better,” Takashi says as he presses his cheek against Tuti’s shoulder back in bed a moment later.
Then Takashi drapes an arm lazily across his chest, and hooks his leg over Tuti’s thigh, toes pressing against Tuti’s ankle.
Tuti just laughs, and pulls the covers up a little higher to block out the growing light in the room.
“Have breakfast with me tomorrow?” Takashi asks after a second.
Tuti laughs. “I don’t know if we’ll be awake in time for that. It’s been morning for a while, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Takashi just chuckles. “Lunch, then.”
“Sure, but on one condition.”
“Hmm?”
“You have to have dinner with me later too.”
Takashi grins, and tightens his grip on Tuti’s chest. “We’ll see.”
“There is a reason I came over here, you know?”
“What, to ask me to dinner on our day off?”
“Maybe?”
“Seriously?”
“…No.” Tuti takes a deep breath. “I just couldn’t stand the thought of you going home without me.”
Takashi is silent.
“Or me going home without you.”
“We’ve done that plenty of times, you know.”
Tuti swallows. “I know."
"More times than I can even count," Takashi says.
"I know. I don’t want to anymore though.”
Takashi’s grip on his shoulder tightens a little for a second.
“That’s why I’m here,” Tuti finishes.
Tuti finds Takashi’s hand resting somewhere between his neck and his collarbone, and squeezes it.
“Okay.” Takashi says again, and his voice is a little shaky. “Okay.”
**
Even though the sun is bright before long in Takashi’s apartment, it’s hours and hours before they wake up--Tuti first, to Takashi’s snores, and an image of Takashi’s face that he’ll never forget no matter how many mornings they spend like this, and then about an hour or so after that, Takashi-groggy, but not too terribly hung-over.
After a quick shower, and a half hour spent poking at his phone while Takashi makes instant coffee (too lazy for grinding, he admits sheepishly), Tuti orders lunch in for both of them-curry, of course.
Dinner ends up being curry too (whoever said having curry for every meal was a bad thing was dead wrong) and then after another night and another day spent at Takashi’s side, things start to make a little more sense, and suddenly Tuti realizes that it’s really not the end like it was supposed to be, but the beginning of something that in all honestly had probably started years ago.
It feels wonderful though, like this is the only way it could possibly have happened, and like it’s the beginning of something that maybe won’t ever end which, Tuti has just decided (and Takashi agrees) really might be the best feeling in the world.
***
(There's a sequel to this now: Limitless)
Author: analine
Pairing: TutixNagayan
Warnings: None. Worksafe.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3,100
Summary: Unexpected new beginnings after senshuuraku.
Notes: I'm not really sure where this came from, but somehow, I ended up writing a Burimyu senshuuraku get-together fic. It was kind of a random idea that I just went with, and this is how it ended up, so... I hope you like it? ^_~ (And despite the title, this has nothing to do with space. Or vacuums. :P It's from Next to You by Bell X1, which I just happened to be listening to a lot as I was finishing this. @_@;)
Anyway. Comments/thoughts are always greatly appreciated. <3
“Why are you here, again?”
Tuti squints as bright, artificial light floods the dim room, but he mostly ignores Takashi’s question for the moment in favor of keeping his balance as he tries not to trip over Takashi, or his own feet in the other man’s small genkan.
Takashi toes off his shoes quickly, stumbling a little as he steps up into the room, most likely trying to give Tuti some space to do the same. It’s probably always awkward with two people here, Tuti’s thinking as he struggles to find a spare surface to hold onto as he unlaces his trainers, and Takashi’s hip connects with his leg as the other man drops his bag in the corner next to his shoes.
Takashi takes a few steps into the small apartment, wriggling out of his coat, and unwraps the scarf from around his neck deliberately, tilting his head back and forth to stretch the muscles as he goes.
Tuti’s sure that Takashi’s question is (mostly) rhetorical, but somehow he feels compelled to answer anyway-he supposes it’s sort of become the running joke of the evening, after all.
**
The first time Takashi had asked, they were tucked away in the evening’s first stop-off, an izakaya not too far from the theater. Tuti had been using Takashi’s shoulder for a pillow for a good twenty minutes or so, and at the time it had seemed like a really good idea, in much the same way that having Takashi refill his glass with sake more times than he’d bothered to count had.
Tuti’s answer that first time had been simple--why not?--to which Takashi had rolled his eyes, but hadn’t moved his ass over an inch (he could have, if he’d been so inclined; it wasn’t that crowded). If anything, he seemed to have shifted a bit in favor of more contact, warm skin soaking through layers of cotton and denim against Tuti’s thigh and calf and ankle in the darkness.
The next time they’d been at the second bar (or maybe it had been the third--it was hard to tell the difference after a while).
Takashi was mingling, standing between Eiki and Tatsuya, watching Asuka and Miki goof off back at the corner table, interjecting encouraging comments here and there with a huge smile on his face, the kind that made his eyes crinkle up at the edges.
Tuti had just kind of sauntered over Ichimaru-style, creeping first into Tatsuya’s peripheral vision and then Takashi’s, who’d given him an elbow in the shoulder for his trouble. The brief moment of eye contact they’d shared stood out in Tuti’s memory of the entire evening though, for some reason, maybe because it had just been so long since he’d seen Takashi like this, and he’d sort of forgotten the way the other man’s eyes took on a certain quality, giddy with exhaustion and overstimulation and a glass or two or three of whatever had been put in front of him that he’d been too polite to refuse.
Takashi had asked him the same thing then, though this time it might have been more along the lines of what the hell are you doing here (delivered with a good natured smirk, of course). Tuti isn’t really sure how he’d answered, just that he had, and that Takashi had made space for him wordlessly, had sought out his eyes next when he turned around to laugh about something the girls had just said, and that after that, he hadn’t left Takashi’s side for the rest of the evening.
**
Takashi had asked him the same thing again, hours later, as morning light had started to reluctantly peek through the night sky, a kind of sober calm falling over everyone as they said their goodbyes and caught the first trains back home.
Pressed next to him on the train, Takashi had leaned over so that his head was practically in Tuti’s lap when he posed the question again, blinking up at him, looking silly but a little serious at the same time.
“You don’t usually take this line,” Takashi said, settling back into his seat and closing his eyes before Tuti had a chance to come up with an answer. Takashi ran a hand over his head, and opened his eyes again slowly. In this light, Tuti could see that they were a little puffy, a little red around the edges. “Right?”
Tuti shrugged. “Figured I’d walk you home. Nothing better to do, you know?”
Takashi blinked, then smiled like he knew something Tuti didn’t. “Are you trying to tell me something, Tsuchiya?” A pause. “I don’t look that bad off, do I?”
Tuti just laughed and shook his head, but Takashi kept asking him the same question from before, his teasing relentless as usual, on the entire walk from the station to his apartment.
Tuti had laughed right along with him, and had given him a series of perfectly acceptable answers--because I can’t trust you to get home otherwise; because you know how much I love this part of town; because I know you still have that bottle of wine I bought you for your birthday three years ago sitting around somewhere-- butting in and interrupting Takashi as he asked again and again, but the butterflies in his stomach had started somewhere on the train, and weren’t showing signs of going away any time soon.
**
In fact, this uncomfortable trembling feeling in his stomach has gotten a little manic now, a little crazy--it has been ever since the door closed behind him in Takashi’s apartment.
There’s just so much of Takashi here, it’s a little overwhelming. When Tuti’s here--and he has been before, just not in a while--he’s reminded of just how much of Takashi there is that he doesn’t see in the dressing room, or on stage, or on short walks to the station together, or during hurried meals in between breaks in their rehearsal schedule. Here, Takashi has everything that matters to him plastered to the walls and stacked up around him, spilling out onto every spare surface, and it makes Tuti’s chest tighten a little, just thinking about Takashi sleeping here, getting dressed here, making his way out to the theater in the morning from this place.
Takashi is eyeing him curiously from across the room though, and Tuti realizes he still hasn’t taken more than two steps in from the genkan.
“You can actually come in, you know,” Takashi teases, eyes shining, his face bright now, despite the late (early?) hour, and the fact that so much was supposed to be ending right now, tonight, today. They were supposed to be sad, right? He didn’t even know when he’d see Takashi again after this.
“And what, now all the sudden you don’t have an answer?” Takashi teases again. “How boring~”
“No, I do, I do,” Tuti hedges.
“Just not ready to share?” Takashi tilts his head curiously at him as hops up onto his bed, and slouches back against the wall.
He grabs a pillow and tosses it to Tuti, gesturing for him to sit down.
“Yeah, maybe that’s it.”
Takashi just blinks, stares past him for a moment, blinks again.
They share a few stories from the uchiage--things that happened over at the girl’s table before Tuti came over at that second (third?) bar, a few interesting tidbits of information that Tuti had gleaned from Shougo-san about what married life was really like, and then they compare notes a bit on who had seemed the worst for wear come morning (Tatsuya--not surprising; Naoya-a little more so).
Eventually the conversation dies down though, and Takashi starts to look a little worse for wear himself, rubbing at his eyes and yawning.
Tuti shifts a little in his seat on the floor across from Takashi’s bed, readjusting the pillow behind his back.
“You going to sleep?” Tuti asks after a few minutes of watching Takashi poke at his phone, his eyes seeming to blink slower and slower at the screen with each passing second.
Takashi shrugs. “Later.” He pokes at his phone for another second, and then sets it down, fixing Tuti with a serious look.
“So,” Takashi says, his eyes dark and a little dangerous, “you ready to tell me yet?”
“What?”
“Or maybe,” Takashi says quietly, “Maybe that’s not how it’s going to go…”
He half-whispers, half-mumbles this last part to himself, as he gets up from the bed and squats down next to Tuti, so close that Tuti can feel the other man’s body heat, can see the traces of eyeliner hiding in the crease of his left eyelid.
Takashi stares at him for a long moment--Tuti is frozen, mind wiped blank from the close proximity of Takashi’s face, from the fact that he can hear Takashi swallow in the space between them, can see the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple plain as day, inches away from his own skin.
Then Takashi closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, all pretenses falling away. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just…”
And then Takashi is leaning forward and pressing his lips to Tuti’s, fingers closing over Tuti’s shoulders and gripping tightly as he tilts his head to get a better angle, noses bumping against each other in the process. Tuti can feel a little stubble on Takashi’s upper lip as they shift, can feel the breath from Takashi’s nose against his cheek, and his hair brushing against his ear. Tuti kisses him back, of course, or he thinks he does, but when he feels Takashi gently part his lips with his tongue he thinks his brain must be seriously short-circuiting, because all of this feels completely familiar in a way, but completely like nothing he’s ever experienced at the same time.
He’s trying to concentrate on Takashi, on what Takashi tastes like, on the pace of his lips and his tongue, so that he can match it, but it’s all a bit surreal, like it’s happening in another dimension, maybe, where time and space just don’t exist like he’s used to, and before he has the nerve to try to deepen the kiss at all, Takashi is pulling away, letting go of his shoulders and almost falling away from him, as he shifts his legs and his body, and moves so that he’s facing Tuti, his back against his bed.
Tuti watches Takashi’s chest rise and fall as he takes a few deep breaths. He’s just staring at Tuti though, blinking every few seconds, and his face is blank except for his eyes--wide and dark and confused, questioning.
“I don’t know why I did that,” he says eventually, but then he shakes his head. “No, that’s wrong. I do. I wanted to. For a long time.”
“Me too,” Tuti says quickly, but he wonders if he’s said it quickly enough, because Takashi just laughs.
“I’m not just saying that. I mean it,” Tuti says, but he suddenly realizes he’s exhausted, he has no idea how to do this, and clearly Takashi isn’t much better off, because he’s just sitting there looking honestly…amused, like he wants to laugh again, but is holding it in.
Tuti’s pretty sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to go with them, finally, after so long.
Then Takashi closes his eyes, drawing his knees to his chest, and sighs. A few awkward beats of silence pass between them.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Takashi says abruptly after another minute of silence, and a second later, he’s on his feet, moving away.
A second after that, he’s in the shower.
The sounds of the water against the shower door drown out Tuti’s thoughts because he lets them, because he’s just too tired to think anymore. He hadn’t realized it before right now, but Tuti thinks maybe with this, he’s completely reached his limit. If he wasn’t so damn tired, he’d probably be out the door, running way from this before he can even figure out what just happened, but he can’t move. He can’t do anything.
It feels like no more than a minute or two, but before he knows it, Takashi is squatting next to him again and shaking his shoulder. He’s smiling now, looking calm. Content, even. He’s changed into a t-shirt and soft grey pajama pants. His hair is wet. If it were long, like it used to be, it’d be dripping onto Tuti’s lap.
“It’s probably bad for you to sleep there, don’t you think?”
That’s all he says, but it’s enough of an invitation for Tuti and something like relief washes over him, as he gets up to follow Takashi into bed. He’s sure there should be something more than just warm…bed…Takashi… going through his head right now, but there really isn’t. Something about this turn of events seems particularly commonplace, normal, though it’s anything but that, of course.
“Wait,” Takashi says and sits up, just as Tuti is about to pull the covers over himself.
“Turn off the light? Second switch over there on the left.”
Tuti nods, gets out of bed, glances over at Takashi to make sure he’s got the right one, and then flips it.
There’s an afterimage though that won’t go away, even when the lights are out and his features have faded into the dimness around them. Tuti thinks of it hours later, lying there staring up into the morning light with Takashi snoring quietly next to him. Takashi’s face, scrubbed clean and bare, no more traces of stage makeup allowed, and his hair, half-slicked back and wet, the shorter dry pieces up on the top sticking up every which way. Takashi, looking at him with no pretense whatever, asking him to turn out the light in his bedroom as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And that, Tuti decides, is a little amazing.
Takashi’s bed is small, so he can feel all the curves and angles of Takashi’s frame next to him immediately after he climbs back in. Takashi smells clean--like soap, and shampoo, and mint. He’s so close, as close as he’s ever, ever been, but Tuti isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do now, what he wants to do.
“I’m really happy,” Takashi says quietly after a moment. The sound of his voice is close too--it settles somewhere deep in Tuti’s chest. “I didn’t think I would be, after all this. The show, I mean.”
Tuti is silent.
“I wish I could figure out why you came here though. You didn’t have to.”
“I did,” Tuti argues. “I definitely did.”
“And why’s that?”
“For this.”
Takashi laughs. “What? One lame little kiss and me running off to the shower and then falling asleep on you?”
“Come on, it wasn’t so bad.”
“Tuti--”
“I’m sure we’ll manage better next time, but… For a first kiss, it wasn’t bad.”
It’s not that dark anymore, morning sun has been making its way in through the cracks in the blinds for a while now, so Tuti sneaks a look at Takashi. His eyes are closed, and he's smiling. Grinning, really--the smile takes up his whole face.
“Yeah, I thought it was pretty good too,” Takashi says finally with a laugh.
He shifts a little so that his forehead is pressed against Tuti’s shoulder, and then moves closer, pressing the full length of his body against Tuti’s side from his shoulders to his toes.
After a few seconds though, he shifts suddenly, sits up on one elbow. “You,” he pokes Tuti in the shoulder. “You should take off your pants.”
Tuti lets out a loud laugh, and Takashi swats at him with his free hand.
“It’s weird to have you wearing that to bed, that’s all. You smell like smoke.”
“Right.”
“Come on, I’ll lend you something.”
Five minutes later, and Tuti has changed into a pair of pants that are way too short on him, but are definitely more comfortable than his jeans, he’ll give Takashi that, and a t-shirt that feels clean and smells a little like Takashi’s shampoo.
“That’s much better,” Takashi says as he presses his cheek against Tuti’s shoulder back in bed a moment later.
Then Takashi drapes an arm lazily across his chest, and hooks his leg over Tuti’s thigh, toes pressing against Tuti’s ankle.
Tuti just laughs, and pulls the covers up a little higher to block out the growing light in the room.
“Have breakfast with me tomorrow?” Takashi asks after a second.
Tuti laughs. “I don’t know if we’ll be awake in time for that. It’s been morning for a while, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Takashi just chuckles. “Lunch, then.”
“Sure, but on one condition.”
“Hmm?”
“You have to have dinner with me later too.”
Takashi grins, and tightens his grip on Tuti’s chest. “We’ll see.”
“There is a reason I came over here, you know?”
“What, to ask me to dinner on our day off?”
“Maybe?”
“Seriously?”
“…No.” Tuti takes a deep breath. “I just couldn’t stand the thought of you going home without me.”
Takashi is silent.
“Or me going home without you.”
“We’ve done that plenty of times, you know.”
Tuti swallows. “I know."
"More times than I can even count," Takashi says.
"I know. I don’t want to anymore though.”
Takashi’s grip on his shoulder tightens a little for a second.
“That’s why I’m here,” Tuti finishes.
Tuti finds Takashi’s hand resting somewhere between his neck and his collarbone, and squeezes it.
“Okay.” Takashi says again, and his voice is a little shaky. “Okay.”
**
Even though the sun is bright before long in Takashi’s apartment, it’s hours and hours before they wake up--Tuti first, to Takashi’s snores, and an image of Takashi’s face that he’ll never forget no matter how many mornings they spend like this, and then about an hour or so after that, Takashi-groggy, but not too terribly hung-over.
After a quick shower, and a half hour spent poking at his phone while Takashi makes instant coffee (too lazy for grinding, he admits sheepishly), Tuti orders lunch in for both of them-curry, of course.
Dinner ends up being curry too (whoever said having curry for every meal was a bad thing was dead wrong) and then after another night and another day spent at Takashi’s side, things start to make a little more sense, and suddenly Tuti realizes that it’s really not the end like it was supposed to be, but the beginning of something that in all honestly had probably started years ago.
It feels wonderful though, like this is the only way it could possibly have happened, and like it’s the beginning of something that maybe won’t ever end which, Tuti has just decided (and Takashi agrees) really might be the best feeling in the world.
***
(There's a sequel to this now: Limitless)